


it's alright, it's alright

by jonphaedrus



Series: let's go to bed before you say how you feel [4]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Bedside Vigils, Complicated Relationships, Everyone Has Issues, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Unresolved Romantic Tension, no betas we die like men, post sigmascape spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 14:09:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14021958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: “I,” Cid snapped, “am fine.”He caved three days later.





	it's alright, it's alright

**Author's Note:**

> title from the vaccines song [if you wanna](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQKjI6395iU). i meant to write this right after 4.2 dropped but ive been super low creative energy until lewis basically revivified me through constant shittweeting about good garlean content.
> 
> god, sigmascape fucked me up so bad. god. im so fucked up! im so fucked up. 
> 
> local man cries, a lot, over a couple of good boys + a chocobo

“It’s been a week,” Jessie told him, loudly tapping her pen on the table right at the angle where the sound of it would tangle up and ricochet around his head. “Don’t you want to go check on him?”

“No,” Cid lied, responding to her annoying tapping by increasing the volume of his hammering. There was no real point to it, but he did it anyway, like a particularly petty child throwing a tantrum. It made some sort of sense—without the newest member of the Ironworks around to cause chaos, it was too quiet. Far, far too quiet. “He’s a big boy. He can take care of himself.”

“I dunno,” Jessie mused. Cid could hear her smile. “You seem pretty out of sorts, Chief.”

“I,” Cid snapped, “am _fine_.”

He caved three days later.

 

 

The infirmary in Rhalgr’s Reach had mostly emptied out after the liberation of Ala Mhigo. Resistance fighters had been relocated to the city to recuperate with the care of Alliance chirurgeons, the Scions had all returned to their usual climes, and the Warrior of Light could mostly take care of themselves. Biggs and Wedge had only recently been allowed back onto semi-active duty, so the only bed currently full when Cid went in was—

Nero’s.

For a long time, Cid stood on the threshold, holding to the stone frame of the open door, and stared over at one of the two private beds, the curtains hiding Nero from him. Finally, he forced himself into motion, dragging his feet forward over the sandstone floor, worn smooth from centuries of feet treading it, to stand in the open door, the cloth pulled tight to grant access.

Nero looked...bad.

He was still, unusually so, for a man who usually was so full of frenetic energy that he seemed half a breath from throwing himself bodily free of his chair and taking off to the races. He was propped up on a small pile of pillows, and breathing evenly, if shallow. He smelled of antiseptic, of herbs and unctions, potions and compounds. He smelled _sick_ ; the smell that Cid always would associate with months spent in and out of fevers as his wounds festered in St. Adama Landama.

Cid finally willed his feet into motion, and came at last to sit down on the corner of the bed, beside Nero’s legs, and there he stared at his hands, folded in his lap. It was late, late enough Cid had shed his uniform, and the cool night air in the Reach left goosepimples on his arms, the back of his neck, as Cid picked at the dirt and grease under his fingernails. He didn’t say anything, didn’t look at Nero.

Couldn’t.

Cid had seen what had been done to him. The blood that had congealed in his specialty-made red uniform, leaving the cloth sodden. He’d sat there, on the ground outside of the Yawn, putting all the pressure that he could onto the wound, the ugly gash that ran nearly all the way across Nero’s gut, as the Warrior of Light had gone sprinting to the Peering Stones, screaming at the top of their lungs for someone to send a runner to Rhalgr’s Reach, a Linkperl message already on its way to Y’shtola and Krile, while Nero watched Cid with his bright eyes dull and faded.

Cid had talked. He didn’t remember what he’d talked about. He’d just been talking, not wanting to say the words—to _beg_ , to whisper, “Please stay.”

He had given in eventually. Holding Nero’s hand, pressure on his wound, as the other man panted for breath, grey, pale, sweat beading his forehead, skin cold and clammy. “Please,” Cid had whispered, watching Nero’s face, as he panted for breath. He’d been barely able to keep his eyes open, despite the fact that Cid had practically been pouring potions in his mouth like water. “If you die on me, Nero, I swear to the Twelve I will find a way to bring you back and give you an earful.”

Nero had smiled at him, bleary. “You only wish, Garlond.”

And he’d lived. He had lived, somehow. Miraculously, all things considered. With his blood loss, the poison—he’d lived. But it would be a slow recovery. A week and a half and here Nero lay, drained and empty, worn into shreds like old fabric. Cid sighed, staring at his hands, and eventually, after long enough had passed, decided he was just. Going to go back to his room and work until he passed out.

He looked back at Nero’s face, and nearly fell off the edge of the bed in surprise when he saw that Nero was watching him through half-open eyes, his face soft and slack, his eyes heavy-lidded. “Gods,” Cid gasped, pressing a hand to his chest, before he reached for Nero’s, slack still on top of the sheets. “How long have you been awake.”

“Long enough,” Nero said, half-smiling, his eyes heavy lidded. “Long enough to watch you have your little breakdown.” Cid huffed a laugh, shook his head. “Coming to have a gloat at my bedside?”

“More like a cry,” Cid managed at last, as Nero turned his hand over to curl their fingers together, thumb brushing up the underside of Cid’s wrist, feeling the lines of his veins, his pulse. “You nearly died back there.” A pause, before he added, “ _Again_.” Closer, this time. Cid has been worrying, more often, that every time Nero almost dies it’s another step closer, and one of these days, sooner than he’d like, Nero really is going to kick it.

“I’m all right.” Nero patted Cid’s hand in a gesture that was probably meant to be soothing, but really just made Cid aggravated with him. If Nero had told him what was going on, communicated for even _half_ a second, maybe this could have been prevented. Maybe they could have gotten him proper medical help. Maybe they could have been putting pressure on the wound to start with.

“I wish you had shared with the class,” Cid settled on at last. “If you’d let us know, we could have—“

“Done what? Wasted time and energy trying to care for me?” Cid looked up, met Nero’s eyes. In the low light of the infirmary, he’d discarded his sunglasses, and Cid could see the hollows under his eyes, exhaustion and ill-health making his narrow face look even more pointed, his cheekbones stark against his skin. “I’m not about to get the Warrior of Light killed. Despite my delusions of grandeur, Garlond, I know what Hydaelyn can live without.”

“What about me?” Cid blurted.

“What?” Nero asked. He looked like his eyes were about to fall out of his skull, his mouth partway open.

They stared at each other. Neither one of them moved. “I wasn’t,” Cid started to say, precisely at the same moment that Nero said, “Did you just—“ and then they both went quiet again.

They were still holding hands. Cid looked away from the other man, rubbed the back of his neck, sighed, and stared down at the flagstones under his feet. He felt like every time they got any closer to untangling the horrible skein that time and absence had woven between them, one or the other of them would stick their foot in their mouth. They’d have a huge fight. They’d blurt out their feelings. They’d have a near death experience. They’d make the executive decision to activate an unkillable superweapon that could destroy the whole entire world. They’d have a really terrible, awkward night of great sex, and then in the morning not talk about it. Ever. Again.

They had now done that _four times_. And they were no closer to figuring out their feelings than they had been when they’d started. Cid didn’t know any more about how he felt about Nero than he had when he’d heard the other man’s voice in the Praetorium, and it had now quite literally been _years_. Still hadn’t figured it out.

“I,” Cid started, and then stopped. Breathed out. Held tight to Nero’s hand. “Would not say that I _like_ having you around, because I do not. I loathe having you around. You give me headaches. You are a pain in the arse. You’re underfoot, _constantly_. You start fights, mostly with me, but also with my other employees. You have no common sense. One day, you are going to get either yourself, or both of us, killed. You never know when to stop poking at a project. I don’t like that you wake me up on time in the mornings. You keep falling asleep on my workbench.”

“I’ve heard...almost this exact list of complaints before,” Nero said, after a moment, laughing until it turned into an ugly cough, and Cid looked over at him worriedly as the other man doubled over, his free hand pressed to his side, his face a rictus of pain. When he got his breath back, he cocked one eyebrow at Cid, the cynical effect somewhat lessened due to the fact that, since he was in hospital, Nero had not slicked his hair back, and he had curls in blond ringlets all over his forehead. “When we were in school.”

“Well,” Cid replied, needled, “Some of us haven’t matured much since school. You’ve had twenty years, I should hope by now you’ve figured out how to not be an immature child, but then you do things like make seawater coffee.”

“In my defense, I was _unaware_ it was seawater until _after_ I had drunk it, and had you simply refilled the kettle, that would not have happened.” But Nero was grinning. Smiling, looking up at Cid with that curious look he got on his face sometimes. Like Cid was the whole entire world, the sunrise and sunset. “But your point, Garlond? I grow weary.”

Cid watched him. For longer, perhaps, than he intended to. Nero leaned back on the pillows, and let him chew it over, didn’t press. Just brushed his thumb, over the hollow of Cid’s wrist, over the flutter of his pulse, and watched his face, avoiding eye contact as was his wont, but still seeking Cid's eyes with his own, as if for reassurance that Cid was still there. Real. “I could look at you for hours,” Nero whispered, into the silence that hung heavy between them. “Just watching your great big brain, thinking things over.”

“It is always painfully boring when you're not around,” Cid said, finally. “Mundane. When you’re near, there’s never any shortage of problems to solve, things to fix, shite to do. I _can’t_ get distracted or run off to do something else, the way Jessie hates, because if I do, you will blow the Ironworks up, probably, and if not, you’ll get yourself arrested and extradited back to Garlemald, or something equally terrible.” He swallowed past a thick lump in his throat. Squeezed Nero’s hand in his own.

“Does that mean,” Nero asked, his voice a low whisper, “You _want_ me as your second?”

“No. But yes. Want is a little strong of a word in this case. Please stop trying to die. It has become very frustrating and stressful, and it’s distracting me from my work.”

“You’re sweet,” Nero murmured, and Cid watched as the other man practically passed out where he lay, exhausted, still and pale.

“Nero?” He asked, eventually. Nero still had hold of his hand.

“’m sleeping, Cid,” Nero mumbled. “Go back to work.”

Cid sat there for a long time in the silence, holding Nero’s hand, tracing his thumb over the other man’s long, narrow fingers, scarred from years of mechanical work, his fingernails chipped and ragged. Not saying anything. Not even really thinking anything. Just listening to Nero’s breathing, rhythmic and reassuring. Gentle. Normal, even. Something routine.

Cid dozed off, and only got up to return to his own rooms when the night shift alchemist came by, roused him, and gently chivvied him off, to go sleep properly in his own bed before he left her _two_ restless, ill-tempered engineers to deal with.

**Author's Note:**

> jonphaedrus @ tumblr and twitter


End file.
